Germany isn't quite the trip that we originally had originally planned to celebrate our silver wedding anniversary - that was supposed to be Sri Lanka, Maldives and Dubai. Although, sometimes you do feel like you have dodged a bullet and our 'Plan B' trip seems to have been one of those moments.

Travelling at this time, with Coronavirus seemingly at every turn, is a real challenge and when government restrictions can change at the drop of a hat. You either have to be lucky, or you have to have a little bit of foresight. We would like to claim we have had a little bit of both boarding our flight at Birmingham International airport heading to Frankfurt early on Saturday morning. Just twelve hours earlier Germany placed restrictions on those in the North of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The East and West Midlands were in the clear, thank goodness.

With just 30 people on board our Lufthansa Embraer 190 (it could seat up to 100 people) there was plenty of space to spread out from other travellers on board flight LH959 departing Birmingham at 06.10 for the 1 hour 30 minute trip to Frankfurt. Once on the ground in Germany we collected a hire car and headed north, first to Eltville, and then onto Rudesheim am Rhein.

Eltville describes itself as the town of wine, sekt (sparkling white wine) and roses. It certainly was a very attractive town with many timber framed buildings, a nice rose garden that still had plenty of colour, and a fair few wine stands dotted around the town. Compared to Rudesheim, which we visited next, it certainly was very peaceful.

Rudesheim am Rhein is a popular stopping off point for many tourists and a place we last visited in December 2018 to see the famous Christmas Market. We found a nice place for lunch and this was a chance to have the first sausage of the trip before exploring Rudesheim without all of the trappings of the festive market.

Leaving Rudesheim we took the car ferry across the River Rhein to Bingen and then drove to Bad Kreuznach to get to our accommodation for two nights at the Hotel Engel.

Bad Kreuznach? I'll guess that no-one reading this will have heard of the place either as until planning this trip it was not somewhere that we had ever considered. The Hotel Engel provided a reservation that could be cancelled, without penalty, until 18.00 on the day of arrival and, if honest, that's why we made a reservation!

Once checked in we had a walk around The Saliental that was located just a few hundred metres from the hotel. This area is supposed to be good for your health as salt water is pumped up into large towers and allowed to trickle down wooden branch walls that help fill the area with a mist of saline air. Whether this works or not is to be seen, but there are a number of these salty walls around the town - it probably helps the health of the local tourist industry at the very least.

In the evening we had dinner at Brauwerk, a modern brewery serving Germanic fayre a short walk from the hotel. It was a busy place but the beer and schnitzel were very good indeed.

On Sunday morning we had a leisurely get up before wandering into Bad Kreuznach itself. The town was actually rather attractive. Timber framed buildings, pleasant pedestrian streets and a fair few coffee shops were available as well. We managed to try some local wine at a winehaus in the town sampling red, white and rosé wines from the local vineyards before heading back to the hotel ahead of our evening meal.

Dinner was had at the Indochina Palace and they served up massive portions of Chinese food. The Germans, very much like us at home, do seem to do foreign food rather well.

From Bad Kreuznach we headed south east to Schwetzingen which was en-route to our accommodation booked for the next three nights in Ansbach. Schwetzingen was home to a large palace (closed because of Covid) and a fabulous garden complex. The garden area was huge and really well set out with lots of different areas to visit. We had never heard of Schwetzingen, but a couple in a coffee shop in Bad Kreuznach said we should visit - it was a good recommendation!

It was pretty much an hour and a half on the Autobahn to reach Ansbach. Our little rental car couldn't quite keep up with the BMWs, Mercedes and Audis but it was worth a bit of a try.

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